Once Just a Cupcake, These Days a Swell

By JULIA MOSKIN

Published: November 5, 2003

Correction Appended

ONE morning in 1996, Allysa Torey and Jennifer Appel, partners who had just opened the Magnolia storefront bakery next to a scruffy bird shop on a sleepy corner of Bleecker Street, made a cake. It was a small cake, so they poured the extra batter into a handy muffin tin. While the breakfast regulars sipped coffee, the first batch of Magnolia cupcakes was baked, frosted and set out on the windowsill.

Forward to summer 2003. At 9:30 a.m. the metal gates are still down at Magnolia. No longer open for breakfast, the bakery must use that time to make cupcakes: 3,000 will be sold before the day is out. The partners have long since fallen out over expansion plans. (Ms. Appel left to open a competing bakery uptown.) Shouting is heard on the sidewalk: the expensive florist who moved in when the birds were priced out is angrily tossing cupcake wrappers out of his sidewalk planters. On another night at midnight, the line still snakes out the door, and tourists pose for pictures, proudly holding cupcakes frosted in pale green and lavender for the cameras.

Chalk it all up to cupcakes. In New York, cupcakes are not lopsided school-bake-sale affairs. They are art, they are fashion, they are a tourist attraction and they can be big business. The Magnolia brings in over $40,000 a week from cupcakes alone. At Crumbs, a seven-month-old Amsterdam Avenue bakery, supersize $2.95 cupcakes have fueled success: the owners are expanding to the East Side.

Bakers report that cupcakes have begun elbowing out tiered cakes at weddings. According to Sylvia Perez, manager of the Cupcake Cafe (which has led the cupcake resurgence since opening in 1988), in the last two years, orders for cupcakes have finally overtaken orders for full-size cakes.

What is it about a cupcake? Some New York fans cite the high frosting-to-cake ratio as the source of the appeal; others, its portability. (Unlike a slice of cake, a cupcake can be eaten on the street, like a hot dog.) But a cupcake is just cake, some batter, some frosting, some sprinkles. Or is it?

Bakers agree that the swelling trade in cupcakes is all about a combination of childhood and chic. Ms. Appel, who opened the Buttercup Bake Shop in 1999 (and who has a Ph.D. in psychology), suggests that cupcakes have a kind of universal nostalgic appeal.

''It's not about any particular decade -- the 50's, the 70's,'' she said. ''It's about a return to childhood, whenever you grew up.''

Fran Sippel, the pastry chef at Downtown Atlantic in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, said that adult customers can grow emotional about her extra-large cupcakes, glazed with Callebaut chocolate ganache and rolled in multicolored sprinkles. They start remembering how their mothers sent them to school on their birthdays with cupcakes packed in a cardboard shirt box.

Mia Kozicharow, a co-owner of Crumbs, agrees that nostalgic adults, not children, are her main audience for cupcakes.

''The kids come in after school, but they aren't the reason we stay open until 11 p.m.,'' Ms. Kozicharow said. ''And it's grown-ups who talk about the cupcakes all the time.''

Soon after opening with a single cupcake on her menu, Ms. Kozicharow installed a suggestion box that quickly filled with cupcake concepts. She now rotates more than 20 variations, including Boston cream, jelly doughnut and cappuccino.

In another signal that adult tastes are driving the market, the Little Pie Company has fused the cupcake and cocktail trends in its new mojito cupcake, with lime and rum flavoring inside and green lime and mint frostings.

Like skimpy Petit Bateau T-shirts and Hello Kitty knapsacks, cupcakes are supposedly designed for children, but they have also become fashionable accessories for knowing grown-ups. Seizing on the back-to-childhood trend, New York bakeries like Kitchenette and Sage American Kitchen have engineered copies of the packaged Hostess cupcake, right down to the squiggle of white icing on the top, the chocolate frosting that peels off in one piece, and the cream filling. It happens to be a delicious combination; it's also a visual joke.

The connection of cupcakes and chic is inescapable, especially in Greenwich Village, where three Marc Jacobs stores have opened within a block of the Magnolia Bakery. Mr. Jacobs's colorful retro clothing is a mirror of the Magnolia's colorful retro cupcakes, and it appeals to the same dressed-up young crowd.

Fashion and cupcakes also collide at Joe, a new coffeehouse on Waverly Place, where the cupcakes are baked by Amy Sedaris, an actress who has appeared on ''Sex and the City.'' (Sarah Jessica Parker persuaded the owner to carry them.)

Ms. Sedaris brings both craftsmanship and irony to her cupcakes, combing flea markets and eBay for vintage pokes, tiny decorative figurines she sticks on top. During the Jewish High Holy Days, Sedaris cupcakes were topped with tiny Israeli flags, and pink plastic ballerinas are a standby.

So how do these creations taste? A sampling by William Grimes and Eric Asimov of the Dining section suggests only that the showiest cupcakes are not necessarily the tastiest. And freshness is crucial: many cupcakes sold in New York bakeries are well past their prime. (Marisa Croce, head baker at the Polka Dot Cake Studio, explained that because cupcakes, unlike cakes, are not sealed all over with frosting, they go stale more quickly.)

In a park opposite the Magnolia Bakery, which is perpetually littered with cupcake boxes, Kevin Gis, a tattooed Manhattan college student, recently introduced his family, visiting from Michigan, to the Magnolia cupcake.

Kevin Gis may have identified the true reason behind New York's cupcake rage: the locals have forgotten how easy they are to make. ''I know, you could never sell these in Michigan,'' he said to his father, who is a baker there. ''People would just look at them and say, 'I could make those at home!' ''

Photos: PORTABLE PARTY -- Variations include 1. the mock Hostess cupcake from Sage, 2. vanilla cupcake from Mitchel London, 3. Reese's cupcake from Crumbs, 4. vanilla and vanilla from Yura, 5. Amy's chocolate cupcake, 6. chocolate with sprinkles from William Greenberg and 7. yellow cupcake from Downtown Atlantic. (Photos by Lars Klove for The New York Times)(pg. F4); SMALL BUT MIGHTY -- A chocolate cupcake topped with a buttercream sunflower, from Cupcake Cafe. (Photo by Lars Klove for The New York Times)(pg. F1)

Correction: November 12, 2003, Wednesday An article last Wednesday about the growing number of shops selling cupcakes in New York City misstated the recent history of a space that houses one, the Magnolia Bakery, at 401 Bleecker Street. When Magnolia opened in 1996, it occupied part of what had been a bird shop. Later, a florist took over the rest of the space. Magnolia did not open next to the bird shop.